License to ‘really’ learn

As surreal as it is to say, it has almost been 1 year since I qualified as a paramedic. Three years of essays, OSCEs and revision meant that I now had the ability to practise as a confident, autonomous health professional … surely that would suffice? I was not prepared for the learning curve. When you pass your driving test, many will say that this is when you ‘really’ learn how to drive—the same can be said once a paramedic qualifies.

On one of my very first shifts as a paramedic, I attended a patient who was suffering a stroke. While I knew the actions we had to take as a crew, and made sure it was established that this patient was time-critical, things did not work as well as I wanted them to. Everything that could have gone wrong, did. The patient was hard to extricate and deteriorating significantly; hence I turned to call for another crew to assist us, only to find that both the radio and ‘terrafix’ had gone down. We were 40 miles out of area and were completely unfamiliar with where the nearest hospital was, whether they would admit stroke patients and the number to pre alert. At that moment, the family and my crewmate turned to me to make the decisions as the lead clinician. My main priority was getting the patient onto the ambulance safely. Luckily, many family members had arrived by then and we were able to extricate the patient safely with clear instruction from the crew and start making our way to the hospital. En route, I managed to call about 20 different numbers to find the correct pathway to get this patient treated rapidly while trying to not panic. Even as we, with much surprise, made it to the correct hospital, I was unfamiliar with the processes and pathways there and all I could focus on was the fact that I was not good enough for my patient.